


A Candle Burns

by grammarpolice



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: (depending on how you view it), Ambiguous/Open Ending, Blood, Blood and Gore, Crying, Dark, Friendly Fire, Gen, Guilt, Gunshot Wounds, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Malcolm Bright Needs a Hug, Malcolm Bright Whump, Men Crying, Sad, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:07:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21978574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grammarpolice/pseuds/grammarpolice
Summary: this got dark@featherdfilly sorry if this isn’t what you imagined!interpret the ending how ever you like. i’m not sure how i did tagging wise, so if you think i need to add any please let me knowi really like writing sad stuff and want to do more  kind of along the lines of this but maybe even darker (angsty teenager here) so if you have any prompts i’ll be internally grateful. this time i’ll spend more time on it than an hourthanks for reading <3
Relationships: Gil Arroyo & Malcolm Bright
Comments: 15
Kudos: 47





	A Candle Burns

**Author's Note:**

  * For [FeatheredFilly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FeatheredFilly/gifts).



He doesn’t mean to pull the trigger.

It happens in the way a child misses a step while running up the stairs, or a foul ball flies into a crowd at a baseball game. In happens in the way the lead of a pencil breaks when too much pressure is applied to its spine, or a car skids across the pavement on an icy December morning.

It happens like a mistake, and he can’t take it back.

It happens like a mistake, and it’s his fault.

It happens like a mistake, and he should’ve known better.

He can’t erase it, or glue it back together, or pretend that everything is fine. He can't take it back, retract it.

The barrel of his pistol smokes.

City lights shine through stained window panes, washing the warehouse in shades of gold and nighttime glow. The walls seem colossal in their stature, stretching upward to merge with thick wooden beams that dangle from the ceiling.

In that moment, it’s almost peaceful.

It’s almost peaceful like cookies fresh out of the oven or like evening walks through the forest. It’s almost peaceful like a lone canoe on an endless lake, or like fine snow sifting over a winter town like glitter. It’s almost peaceful like all of the dust in the room hardens and falls to the dirt like raindrops on a leaf.

In that moment, everything is still.

In that moment, Gil swallows his heart, all slimy and bloody as it slides down his esophagus.

His fingers hover above the trigger.

His palm chokes the pistol’s handle, and it melts in his hand the way candle wax melts beneath a flame. It pushes against the calloused skin between his thumb and pointer finger. It’s faded in all the places his hand rubs against its body. It feels so right in his hand—so tangible and so familiar— that it’s a terrifying kind of wrong.

Ahead, Malcolm and Daniel Gruer, the six-foot felon with a hold around the former’s wrists, collapse to the ground. A cloud of dust circles them, and Gil can taste it on his tongue.

The pistol weighs in his palm. He nearly throws it to the ground like it’s a snake or a white-hot rod. He nearly throws it to the ground like it’s poison or jagged fangs or everything else wrong in the world.

Instead, he slips it into his pocket, if only because he deserves to be burned.

Dani shouts, “Bright!”

And Gil lunges forward.

His stomach lurches into his throat. It's metallic and heavy and thick, and he nearly gags.

When he reaches Malcolm, it shatters, and his chest swells with its matter. His chest swells with guilt. His chest swells with anger and self-loathe and wrongness, and he wishes he could mop it up like blood.

He says, “Call an ambulance.”

“But—”

“Call an ambulance!”

Dani pulls her walkie-talkie from her pocket. It’s static when she flicks it on, and she curses. “This is Dani Powell. I need an ambulance at 153 Wells Street, there’s an officer down.”

Gil thinks she says more. He thinks she describes his injuries— “Gunshot wound to his upper left torso” — and says she’ll meet them outside of the warehouse. He thinks she turns to Gil and tells him that they’ll be here soon, that Bright will be okay.

But it doesn’t matter.

After a moment, she’s gone.

His hands are warm and sticky with Malcolm’s blood. He pushes harder against his ribcage.

“Fuck. Fuck! Talk to me, Malcolm. Talk to me.”

Malcolm sucks in a breath of air, then winces like it’s shards of glass instead. “D-Daniel…,” he says.

The smell of blood is palpable.

Gil swallows it down like metal tons, and it simmers in his gut. “I got him,” he says. “But, fuck. I shouldn't have taken the shot. You were too close—you were too—”

Malcolm coughs a wet with blood, weak with pain kind of cough. “You sh-should save him.”

“What?”

Gil meets Malcolm’s eyes. They’re half-lidded, fluttering between conscious and coherent. His skin is pallor, lips curling into a grimace.

“He’ll die,” Malcolm says.

“You’ll die!” Gil retorts, and he hopes it doesn't come across so desperate.

“’m already gonna die. It hit my aorta”

Bile presses against Gil’s tongue, against his chest. It claws at his stomach. It shimmies into the space between his bone and muscle and just fucking burries itself into his blood.

Because it’s his fault.

Malcolm’s dying beneath his palms and it’s his fault.

He wishes it were him. It should be him.

The blood on his hands eats away his skin. It gnaws at muscle and bone and veins until he feels empty. It sinks into his bloodstream, pulsates through his limbs, his chest, his brain until it’s all-consuming.

All-consuming emptiness.

It’s almost comical. How can he be consumed by nothing?

But, in a way, he supposes it’s everything.

It’s years of late-night movie marathons and runs to the convenience store for snacks. It’s working cases into the small hours of the day. It’s cooking competitions and projects that will never get finished and camping and everything else a father and son are supposed to do.

And now it’s spilling from Malcolm’s chest. It’s bleeding out onto the dirt beneath them. It’s coating Gil’s hands and there’s nothing he can do.

Gil says, “Don’t talk like that,” because he doesn’t know what else to say.

Gil says, “I wish it were me,” and he means it.

And even when blood begins pouring out of Malcolm’s mouth, when it hangs on his lips, snakes down his chin and onto his chest, Gil says, “You’re gonna be okay,” because fathers lie to protect their children.

“Gil, I’m scared,” Malcolm whispers. His eyes are raw with tears. Some of them trickle down his cheek, and Gil wipes them off with bloody fingertips. A red print paints Malcolm’s flesh, and more tears clear track marks through it. “I don’t wanna go.” He hiccups, and blood and saliva spill from his throat. “I don’t— fuck, it doesn’t even ‘urt anymore, it just…”

Gil wants to shoot himself.

He wants to chew his own fucking head off until he bleeds out.

He wants to eat his own heart so that he feels something—anything—other than the drowning feeling eating up his chest.

And even though he’s terrified, even though he’s so fucking scared and so fucking sad, he says, with a voice as steady and even and serene as he can muster, “Don’t be scared.”

“I don’t wanna leave you… I don’t wanna…”

“I’m right here. I’m not goin’ anyway and neither are you.”

Malcolm shakes his head. “I’m sorry, Gil. I shouldn’t—”

For a moment, an unwarranted, undeserving, suffocating anger consumes Gil. It crawls and it bites at his throat, it drags razor fingernails against his skin, it impales his lungs with rusting iron blades and he deserves it. He loves it. He needs it because it buries reality. “No—fuck, Malcolm! I’m sorry! Not you! You have nothing to be sorry about, I’m the one that—”

Malcolm whispers, “Gil.” The words melt off of his tongue with so little force, so little Malcolm, that at first Gil isn’t sure if he said anything at all. “You’ve done so ‘uch for me. Thank you.”

Gil says, “Close your eyes, Malcolm,” because he can’t bear to look at them any longer.

He does. Then the rise and fall of his chest slows to a stop and the blood and saliva and tears streaming from his face stills.

Gil doesn’t cry because he doesn’t deserve to.

Instead, he looks to Daniel Gruer, pulls himself up on shaking feet, draws the gun from his pocket, and shoots the corpse in the head.

He sits back down next to Malcolm and kisses his temple. 

Then he twists the gun around in hands for a moment, runs his fingers over the etchings and fading of years, and puts the muzzle of the pistol to his temple. 

**Author's Note:**

> this got dark 
> 
> @featherdfilly sorry if this isn’t what you imagined! 
> 
> interpret the ending how ever you like. i’m not sure how i did tagging wise, so if you think i need to add any please let me know 
> 
> i really like writing sad stuff and want to do more kind of along the lines of this but maybe even darker (angsty teenager here) so if you have any prompts i’ll be internally grateful. this time i’ll spend more time on it than an hour 
> 
> thanks for reading <3


End file.
